Vase featuring a battle between a griffon and warrior in Scythian clothes, from the Louve

Hello and welcome back to Anthropology Friday. Today we’re featuring a short, speculative segment from Adolf Erman’s Travels In Siberia (vol. 2) on possible connections with Greek history and some customs of the Tatar people.

Some interesting observations on local caves:

“The metal utensils and the fire-places in these caves leave no doubt that they were inhabited in ancient times by itinerant metal finders, of whom similar traces are found farther south, also in the Ural, in the country of the Voguls ; and who at one time spread themselves over all parts of northern Asia with the same object, just as the famed Yenitian adventurers went through the German mountains.

“But it is manifest, also, that the Greek information respecting the gold-seeking Arimaspis, whom the ancients unanimously assigned to the northern branches of the Ural, referred in reality to some of these temporary dwellers in the western part of the country of the Samoyedes ; and well might they credit Aristeas of Proconesus, when he related that, on a journey in the northeast of Europe, he collected those accounts from the farthest of the hunting tribes which he had reached. The obscurest portion of his narrative, in which he tells us that the Arimaspis seeking metals in the extreme north of Europe, “drew forth the gold from under the Grifons,” will be found to be, at this moment, literally true in one sense, if we only bear in mind the zoologically erroneous language used by all the inhabitants of the Siberian tundras.”

EvX: According to Herodotus:

This Aristeas, possessed by Phoibos, visited the Issedones; beyond these (he said) live the one-eyed Arimaspoi, beyond whom are the Grypes that guard gold, and beyond these again the Hyperboreoi, whose territory reaches to the sea. Except for the Hyperboreoi, all these nations (and first the Arimaspoi) are always at war with their neighbors.[2]

“By comparing numbers of the bones of antediluvian pachyderms, which are thrown up in such quantities on the shores of the polar sea, all these people have got so distinct a notion of a colossal bird, that the compressed and sword-shaped horns, for example, of the Rhinoceros … are never called, even among the Russian … merchants, by any other name than that of ” birds’ claws.” The indigenous tribes, however, and the Yukagirs in particular, go much farther, for they conceive that they find the head of this mysterious bird in the peculiarly vaulted cranium of the same rhinoceros; its quills in the leg bones of other pachyderms, of which they usually make their quivers; but as to the bird itself, they plainly state that their forefathers saw it and fought wondrous battles with it: just as the mountain Samoyedes preserve to this day the tradition, that the mammoth still haunts the sea-shore, dwelling in the recesses of the mountain and feeding on the dead.”

Tatars:

Siberian Tatars during a festival

“On the morning of the 27th we were again surprised at seeing, beyond these Russian villages, in the vicinity of Tobolsk, and close to the steep bank of the Irtuish, sooty and squalid yurts. We entered them, and immediately knew the occupants to be Tatars, as well from the shaven crowns of the men, as from the handsome brunette visages of both sexes. This was the place called Phildtefsk, which we saw at our departure, only in the evening and from a distance. The Ostyak mode of living cannot be confounded with that of these people, yet the yurts of both are shaped alike; but those of the Tatars have always the advantage in cleanliness, and, besides the chubal of beaten clay, there is also the well-set boiler: in the recesses, too, instead of skins there lies usually some woven fabric, sometimes cushions of Russian cloth, sometimes Bucharian carpets, and, with the poorest, at least coverlets of hairy felt. The men and women were now sitting, with their legs crossed under them, squeezed together round a tall vessel in which the brick tea was prepared; there was at the same time a strong odour of fat from the horse-flesh in the great pot.

“It is only on the wildest spots of the thickly wooded banks of the river that these descendants of the former rulers of the country are still to be seen…”

The Tatars are a Turkic people[1] living in Asia and Europe who were one of the five major tribal confederations (khanlig) in the Mongolian plateau in the 12th century CE. The name “Tatar” first appears in written form on the Kul Tigin monuments as (TaTaR). Historically, the term “Tatars” was applied to a variety of Turco-Mongol semi-nomadic empires who controlled the vast region known as Tartary. More recently, however, the term refers more narrowly to people who speak one of the Turkic[1] languages.

The Mongol Empire, established under Genghis Khan in 1206, subjugated the Tatars. Under the leadership of Genghis Khan’s grandson Batu Khan (c. 1207–1255), the Mongols moved westwards, driving with them many of the Mongol tribes toward the plains of Russia. The “Tatar” clan still exists among the Mongols and Hazaras.

The largest group by far that the Russians have called “Tatars” are the Volga Tatars, native to the Volga region (Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), who for this reason are often also simply known as “Tatars”, with their language known as the Tatar language. As of 2002 they had an estimated population close to 6 million.

The word “Tatar” or “Tadar” is also used as a self-designation by some closely related Siberian ethnic groups; namely the Chulym, Shor, Teleut and Khakas peoples.

According to the 2002 census, there are 500,000 Tatars in Siberia, but only 9,611 of them are indigenous Siberian Tatars. At least 400,000 are ethnic Volga Tatars, who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization.[4] The Volga Tatars are an ethnic group who are native to the Volga-Ural region.

In 1928–9, 35,000 to 40,000 Crimean Tatar kulaks were arrested and deported to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. As in Ukraine, Tatar peasants opposed collectivization, and many of them perished in the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3. … Between 1917 and 1933 approximately 150,000 Crimean Tatars—half of their population—had been killed, imprisoned, deported to Soviet Asia, or forced to emigrate.

(perhaps the same thing happened to the Volga Tatars, resulting in the Siberian Tatars being a minority among Tatars in Siberia. )

I believe this is the last we will hear of the Tatars, for after this the author spent some time in Russian towns further south before rounding lake Baikal and visiting a town in what is now Mongolia. That’s all for today, but we’ll continue with our adventure next Friday!

7 thoughts on “Anthropologyish Friday: Griffins and Tatars”

So, my knowledge of all things Tatar, beyond the Wikipedia summary level, is limited to accidentally discovering a few years ago that Google translate thinks (or thought back then) that Crimean Tatar is Turkish, with awkward but almost usable results. (I have read that learning standard Turkish can actually get you pretty far in Central Asia. Add in Russian and you pretty much are set. Siberia would be another matter, I suppose, but these days I’d guess that it would be hard to find places where nobody speaks Russian. The linguist in me is sad, but the lazy tourist is less so…)

Re: Romance languages, there seems to be some asymmetry. Portuguese speakers supposedly can understand a little of Spanish, but not so much the reverse. (This may or may not be more the case in Brazil than in Portugal itself). That said, I’ve known a lot of Americans who studied Spanish in high school and have found it useful while traveling in Italy.

As far as asymmetry in understanding languages goes, I personally found that people in Glasgow can perfectly understand Americans, but I find Dutch easier to understand without study or training than Scottish English. (Scotts Gaelic is quite rare to actually hear spoken. The version of English, which I think is justly called a separate language, is still quite common.)

I’ve studied Spanish, and occasionally mistake Portuguese for Spanish with some weird words thrown in. My experience w/Portuguese speakers is they can basically understand my Spanish, though perhaps they’ve also studied Spanish. A lot more people speak Spanish than Portuguese, though, so maybe P speakers have more practice listening to S than vice-versa. Italian, likewise, sounds a lot like Spanish with an Italian accent to me, but I haven’t spent as much time talking to Italians. French seems much more different to me, but that might just be their weird spelling. I know nothing about Romanian.

People in Glasgow have probably watched American TV/movies, whereas we haven’t seen much Glaswegian TV/movies. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to/read anything in Dutch, so I can’t productively compare it to Robbie Burns. 🙂

French is of relatively little use for other Romance languages (with the slight exception of Catalan, which is sort of halfway between French and Spanish). Romanian is kind of out there. At least with French you can get a bit of the verbs and the articles more easily, but Romanian grammar seems to have had a lot of Slavic influence (and maybe worse, Hungarian…).

Dutch is particularly easy if you know both English and German. I actually got myself into a bit of trouble with Duolingo taking the test out of Dutch as a joke. Ended up with some lessons way over my head, though I did figure it out eventually. I didn’t have the same problem with any Scandinavian languages I tried testing out of, always ended up in the first lesson, anyway. Besides the similarities with English and German, the intonation of Dutch is much more similar to American English intonation than American English is to most British English. If you’re a little jetlagged at Schipol airport and it’s a bit noisy, it’s hard to tell when the Dutch announcement ends and the English announcement begins. If you ever want to learn Dutch and have occasion to use it, rural Flanders (northern Belgium) is pretty much monolingual. They’ll say they’re speaking Flemish, but it’s Dutch.